There has been a stark decline in the size and diversity of the Year 12 Economics student population in Australia since the early 1990s. This paper addresses 3 key questions to uncover what is driving these trends at Australia's high schools.

High-quality central bank communication can improve the effectiveness of monetary policy and is an essential element in providing greater central bank transparency. This paper investigates three important aspects of central bank communication - audience, readability and degree of reasoning.

How monetary policy affects the economy is a central question in macroeconomics. Standard economic thinking predicts interest rate cuts boost economic activity. This idea has recently been challenged by claims that changes in monetary policy have a so-called ‘information effect’. Calvin He explores this concept further in this discussion paper.

The key finding in this paper is that financial conditions provide useful information about downside risks to GDP and employment growth, and upside risks to the unemployment rate. That is, when financial conditions are extremely restrictive, the risks of very bad outcomes for these variables increase.

This paper studies the role of collateral in credit markets under stress.